Alloy Productions is super proud to announce that we have finished the work for a new customer, Glamour Eyes. Glamour Eyes is an eyelash extension and facial hair removal boutique located on 9th Ave. in Albany, OR. They are also the only boutique of their kind in the valley as they are the only boutique certified by Lavish Lashes (a leader in the lash industry) to perform this service! We did the work of creating their official webpage, setup some social networking and made sure to get them listed on Foursquare, Google Places and Yelp, for those that enjoy checking-in at places they go to and would like to read/post reviews of their experiences.

Matt met with Chelsea & Mindy (such sweeties) on Friday, May 10, 2013 and the pair expressed interest in having the job done by Thursday, May 16. This was due to an event the pair are holding and they wanted to be able to promote their new pages at the event. Head on over and check out their website, show a little “Like” on Facebook, “Circle” them on Google+ and/or “Follow” them on Twitter so you may stay up-to-date on specials they may be running!

Josh Bile is a comic book creator and needed a website and blog put up. It is still in the constructive process, as we are still working out some e-commerce options for his site so he can sell his comics directly from his site rather than having to link over to Amazon or any other internet shopping service. Josh wanted a darker, stripped down look to his site and we were happy to accommodate! Head over to JoshBile.com and check it out and make sure to subscribe to his RSS feed so you can get updates about when his online store goes up or when he releases new comics!

This is a screen grab from Facebook. I am an admin of this page, and Facebook wants businesses to now pay for the people who have already “Liked” that page to get updates in their news feeds. This new update has not yet been implemented across the board, but it is going to be. There is a bunch of more info on this topic over on AlwaysUpward, who have gone through the motions to figure out a work around. You can read that series of 2 articles by clicking hereif you want to make sure you continue receiving updates via Facebook. It is a pretty convoluted series of steps, and it may be easier to set up a Twitter. Your call.

That being the case, I want to take a minute to let you know that the Facebook page will still be in existence, but I am going to use it a lot less. I will send the posts to Facebook still, but only about 10% of you will see the posts in your news feeds. If you want to see all of the posts that go up on this blog, then I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up for an account with Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. Twitter is my preferred method of social networking, and probably the most accessible, so that is what I suggest. Links to our other social sites can be found at the top of this blog in the sidebar.

Understand that Facebook is backing all of its “Page” users into a corner with this move and it is out of our hands. I apologize for any inconvenience, but if I wanted to pay Facebook for people to see my posts, I would run an ad. As I said before, this new functionality has not yet been implemented on all pages, so I’m trying to make you aware of it before I have to start paying to make sure you see it.

This blog post is to make you aware of “Check-In” sites. What are “Check-In” sites? Well, Facebook has the functionality built-in to their site, but there are plenty of others out there, as well. Foursquare, Google Places (which is also a part of Google+ now), Urbanspoon (for restaurants) and Yelp are the major ones that come to mind. Different sites cater to different crowds so it depends on what reason people have to “Check-In” to your place of business. Should people be interested in just letting their Facebook and Twitter friends know where they are and with whom, Facebook and Foursquare work best for that. Whereas, if people want to leave detailed reviews about their experience at your establishment, Google Places and Yelp tend to be the sites people lean toward. Nowadays, Yelp is almost completely comprised of jerks that want to say horrible things about your place of business, no matter what the experience was.

You may be wondering why I am bothering to post about these sites. Well, here’s some info you didn’t know…

The owner of Alloy Productions, Matt Jacobs, is holding a workshop for people interested in expanding the web-presence of their band, brand or business. We are calling this workshop “Web1.0″ and it will be the first of its kind to be offered in the area. “Web1.0″ will focus on the importance of maintaining a website/blog and social networks. Matt will give a short presentation and will leave plenty of time to answer your questions. This workshop is not about how to get more “Likes” on Facebook or more “Followers” on Twitter, but we will touch on the importance of engaging that audience.

The event is open to all comers, but we would like people to email us or click the “Attending” button on the workshop’s Facebook Event Page if they plan to attend so we can be prepared. The purpose of signing-up, is so we know how many people to accommodate when it comes to refreshments, chairs, etc… We do have a limit of how many attendees will be permitted in the room, so we may need to setup a second date for the “Web1.0″ workshop. We want to make sure that the people that are interested in this workshop get a chance to attend.

Sign-up is simple enough, just send an e-mail to matt@alloyproductions.org with “Web1.0″ in the subject line. Make sure that you include you’re first and last name, the name of your business or organization, a link to your current website/blog and what type of organization it is (i.e. band, business, non-profit organization or self). You can also click the “Attending” button on the Facebook Event page and ask questions or leave comments there or to sign-up!

We are hoping that this will be the first of a series of these workshops. We will continue to host these “Web1.0″ workshops as long as people are interested in attending. We also plan to hold “Web2.0″ workshops in the near future that will focus on advancing your web-presence even further for those interested in audio/video podcasting.

If you have any questions about whether or not this workshop is for you, feel free to ask them here as a comment, asking them on any of our social network pages or by e-mailing them to matt@alloyproductions.org.